Life at the Speed of Us

by Heather Sappenfield

  “Promise you won’t go back,” he repeated.

  I looked at my translucent hands.

  “Sovern, please!”

  “I promise.”

  Dad blew out his breath, walked to the counter, and poured himself another cup of coffee.

  “When’d you get up?” I asked.

  He returned to the table. “I never really went to bed.”

  We both flinched as his phone rang. His ringtone was “Strawberry Fields,” one of his and Mom’s favorite songs. They’d been crazy for the Beatles. I’d loaded it on his phone the week before Mom died. It vibrated too, shuddering against the table’s hardness like Mom’s trapped spirit trying to bust out.

  “Hello. Yes, Perry.” Perry was Handler’s first name. Dad looked at me as he spoke. “I know she’s absent. She’s here with me. We both have a bug. Thanks for calling.”

  Dad set his phone back on the table, all thoughtful. He sat down, placed his forearms on either side of it, and leaned toward me, intent.

  “Now, tell me why that guy last night—that guy who happened to show up on the recreation path, at night, just when we needed him—was wearing my hat.”

  I shrugged.

  “I checked. That hat’s gone from the basket.”

  I reached out, ran my finger up a red tulip’s petal. If Dad thought visiting Mom was morally wrong, Súmáí would put him over the top. Especially since I suspected Súmáí was the vandal.

  “I never get these right,” I said.

  “What?”

  “The flowers never look how Mom had them.”

  Dad sighed and shook his head. “Don’t do that to yourself, Sov.”

  “His name’s Súmáí.”

  “Unusual name,” Dad said.

  I shrugged.

  “And he’s a liftie?”

  “Uh-huh.” I’d been prepared to spill the truth, but Dad was giving me an out. It wasn’t really a lie—somewhere in time, Súmáí did work on the mountain, doing whatever it was that employed the Utes back then. Erecting wickiups? Hunting? Gathering nuts and berries? Was he from the past of this universe, or the past of another? Maybe even the present of another.

  “Are you dating him?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  Dad’s face relaxed. “Then how did he get my hat?”

  “I met him on one of my snowshoe hikes. I was wearing it, and he needed a hat. That’s all.”

  “And last night?”

  I shrugged. “Right place, right time?”

  Dad searched my face for truth. I could see when he decided to drop it. “You’re not wearing your sling.”

  “My arm’s fine.”

  “Wear it,” he said.

  “Dad!”

  “Wear it!”

  I shot the heat from my eyes at the table and ran my thumbnail down a curve of woodgrain. I shoved back, chair screaking, and stalked toward the bedroom.

  “Sovern,” he said as I reached the door. “I only want what’s best for you.”

  I turned around, surprised. Usually he just abandoned me to my rage.

  “The accident, school, Gage, the whole last year, now this … even these flowers. You’re destroying yourself trying to keep her alive. You didn’t kill her, and you have to accept that she’s gone.”

  My hand pressed my stomach.

  “This is our universe, Sov. This is what life has given us. Our test.”

  “Screw tests!”

  Dad shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Just because you see the world through antique eyes doesn’t mean I have to! The world is so different from what you’ve believed. Don’t you see? Did you know that right now, right here”—I threw out my arm—“nine, maybe eleven dimensions surround us? Not three. Eleven! We just can’t perceive them, and just because we can’t perceive a thing doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist!”

  “Doesn’t it?” He scanned the wood floor at his side like it held truth and shook his head.

  “Dad, I can tap other universes! Maybe other times. Why me? Why now?”

  “You’re far sharper than me about these things. No doubt about it. But things are the way they are for a reason. Just because you can do a thing, doesn’t mean you should. It’s not right.”

  Was he really saying “can” like that, after I’d repeated it yesterday, trying to hold on to my promise to be good? Another failed test. It felt like life was yanking the rug out from under my feet. But a grain of truth in what he’d said hit me like a punch. I barked a growl of frustration and threw my hands in the air. It stole my energy, and I slumped against the doorjamb. Dad was with me in a second, helping me to bed, but I could tell he felt puny too.

  Bookmark:

  Many Worlds Theory

  Hugh Everett III

  Observation does not stop quantum matter

  from behaving in multiple forms, rather it makes quantum matter split into copies of itself to

  account for all its possibilities. These

  possibilities proceed independently.

  24

  Dad finally conked out, so I hung in the main room, grumpy from his stubbornness, but also because I’d failed and hurt him again. I needed to conquer two days of homework, the last thing I wanted to do. I pulled out my phone and found I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

  Outside, snow fell in wet clots that the wind chucked at everything. I prayed Súmáí wasn’t in it. First week of March, our biggest snow month. Our doctor visit was a week from Saturday. I hoped I’d be able to snowboard soon.

  Rhythmic snores forced their way under the closed bedroom door. Dad had never slept in the middle of the day like this, not even after Mom died. Mostly he came to bed after me and got up first. He loosed a honker snore, then there was a pause, and I pictured him rolling over. I must have been sleeping pretty heavily not to be woken by that at night. I remembered Wash’s snores from when I was little, when we’d both slept in the cabin’s main room. After Wash, a person could sleep through a bomb blast.

  Hungry, I went to the cupboard and mentally thanked Wash. He’d obviously been to City Market the day before. It was almost noon, so I felt okay about choosing a bag of potato chips. I pinched it open and reclined on the couch. I set the bag in the cranny between my hip and the couch’s green velvet and slid on my headphones.

  Angelou’s voice filled my head, and I ate. And ate. The book turned really sad. She had to leave Stamps, Arkansas, for a new life with her parents. Her new life, the life she’d dreamed of for years, was awful. Awful, like getting raped by her mother’s boyfriend. Angelou finally told someone, and the boyfriend was murdered, probably by family and friends. Sure that she’d caused his death, Angelou quit talking.

  Had Lindholm chosen this book for my benefit? Did she know I’d quit talking because my whining had caused that crunched Honda? I cringed, remembering myself the day I hit the Shangri-La tree, yelling at the interstate. Loosing that wail after the porcupine shot its quills in me. Tucker, Wash, and Dad flinching as I let go a third wail, at fate. That last one over Pride’s edge. Yesterday, I’d even yelled at Handler. Last night, my words had brought Dad to that tree. Why couldn’t I just shut up? Protect the world from me with silence?

  I glanced at the bedroom door. On 2/22, something in me had needed to scream. To hurl my rage on the air. I studied my hands, heard Dad’s snore, and pressed my lips tight.

  I reached into the chip bag but found I’d polished off the whole thing. I returned to the cupboard and snagged a bag of tortilla chips. I pinched it open and set it next to my hip just like the first. I ate. And ate. I bit the chips in pieces, sucking on them till the salt was gone, then chewing the mush. Corn chips devoured, I headed to the cupboard and came back with a box of wheat crackers, coaching myself to speak only when necessary.

  A knock sounded at the door. I
stood, forgetting about the crackers and spilling them. Wash opened the door, and I held my fingers to my lips.

  “Hey,” he whispered. “How long’s he been out?” He was carrying a sheet cake topped with foil, no doubt from Crispy.

  I herded crackers back into their box, brushed crumbs off the cushion, and wondered how much Dad had told him about what had happened. “Couple hours.” Those words couldn’t hurt anyone.

  Wash shook his head. “What happened last night? You two were toast.”

  “Lunch?”

  “Hell yes!” Wash whispered. He set the cake on the table.

  I got out fixings for peanut butter and honey sandwiches. His favorite.

  “Get those potato chips I bought.”

  “Gone.”

  “Get the corn chips then.”

  “Gone.”

  “And you were chowing crackers when I got here? Hungry or what?”

  I shrugged. He eyed me, turned his head slightly, and listened to Dad’s snore. “He’s never done this.”

  I stared at the four slices of bread I’d laid out. I ladled the knife into the peanut butter and spread it. Wash grabbed the honey, but it was cold and thick. He walked to the microwave, popped the lid, and set the bear-shaped container in for thirty seconds.

  “Big John, Tucker, all the guys send their regards.” He returned and coated every millimeter of the bread golden. “They miss your smiling face.”

  I grunted, flashed him a whatever smile, and slapped the peanut butter slices on top.

  Wash took his sandwich. Honey dribbled down the sides and onto his hand. He tore into it, which is how Wash ate everything. He usually consumed two, maybe three sandwiches, so I left the things out. I took a bite and chewed. Honey ran down my hand too, and I sucked it off. Next thing I knew, I’d brought the salt shaker from the counter and was coating my sandwich. I took a bite, and it tasted so right.

  Wash watched me, lips pursed. “I could just get you a salt lick. Mount it on a stick so you could carry it around like a lollipop.”

  My mouth fell open.

  “Manners,” Wash whispered.

  Salt.

  “Sov, what the hell’s going on around here? Last night you two were rag dolls. I had to sit you in front and your Dad behind, then strap you both to me so you wouldn’t fall off the snowmobile.”

  It felt weird, hearing things that I’d done without even knowing it.

  “Now Briggs is in there sawing logs,” Wash continued. “Middle of the day! And you’re out here, not at school. Inhaling salt like … like … ”

  “A porcupine,” I whispered.

  “Yes!”

  Wash watched as my mind raced over that discovery. “Sov … you, Briggs, the guys, and Tara … you’re my only family.”

  I considered silence, and how it could hurt people too. Yesterday, I’d resolved to be good. I factored in the danger of the spruce trees. Why couldn’t I settle into a steady rising equation?

  I sighed. “I know.” I looked at my left hand, resting on the table in a slab of sunlight, and as I laid that hand on Wash’s arm, it cast a thick shadow. “You’re all my family too,” I said, and I felt that promise to be good surge back to me.

  Bookmark:

  Quantum Immortality

  In quantum theory, a person dying is only

  one of two possibilities. In another “branch”

  of that person’s “universal tree,” he survives.

  25

  As I strode into school the next morning, warmth burned my cold cheeks. Dr. Bell stood facing the big steps, the immigrant girls listening. Some mornings, they’d be bawling, and word would spread that the authorities had rounded up and deported their parents. At least their parents are alive, I thought, but then I felt guilty. I still had Dad and Wash and my ski-patrol family. And now I lived in the cabin. I pushed back my hood and smelled the janitor’s barfy cleaner lingering on the air.

  In the first hall, lockers slamming seemed like a sort of drumroll. I dreaded facing Shelley Millhouse in English. She’d had a whole day to reflect on what had happened at the spruce, and that couldn’t be good. She’d probably stare at me the whole period.

  She didn’t stare, though. Instead, she turned sideways in her front-row desk and never even looked at me, and I studied the false-calm way her elbow rested across the back of her seat. What could she possibly be thinking? Neither of us contributed to class discussion—I barely heard it, actually—and I was glad for the voice recorder on my desk. To stop myself from staring at Shelley, I studied my palm.

  Class ended, and Shelley bolted. I blew out my breath and gathered my folder, pencil, and copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I was close to last out of the room, thinking how weak I’d been after my last two travels through the spruce. On my earlier visits, I’d been mentally shaken but physically okay. Touching Mom must have been what made me so weak. Dad had been weak too, and he’d kissed Mom.

  I remembered Súmáí miming an explosion. Though I’d understood what he’d meant at the time, it finally sank in: I could not touch those vision-selves. If touching Mom had made me that weak, touching another me would probably mean death. Maybe the death of more than just me.

  I rolled my eyes and then my shoulders. It doesn’t matter anyway, I thought. I promised. I can.

  “Hey.” Shelley was leaning against a section of lockerless wall.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “You all right?” she asked. “You were absent yesterday.”

  “I’m fine.”

  At the hall’s far end, someone shouted above the slamming lockers, and we both looked that direction. Shelley glanced at people passing and whispered, “What was that, Sovern?”

  “It’s complicated—”

  “Try me,” she said.

  “I don’t—”

  “I’m not as dumb as you think,” she said. “I may not be a genius like you, but I’m not stupid.”

  “Genius?” I laughed.

  Shelley grimaced. “What happened?”

  “Forget it.”

  “I lied for you,” she said.

  “You didn’t say a word.”

  Shelley grimaced again. She was right, no doubt, and if she hadn’t come along and found me, things could have been really bad.

  I took a long drag of air. “I think maybe it was another universe.”

  I had to hand it to Shelley. She just swallowed once, nodded, and said, “I thought so.”

  “Honestly?”

  “It’s the only logical solution. Clark is studying physics at CU.” Clark was her brother. “He’s so into all this stuff. He’s always talking about it.”

  “You can’t tell anyone,” I said.

  “So you were … what … drained from visiting another universe?”

  I pressed my lips and shrugged.

  “What are you doing, Sovern?”

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  One of Shelley’s eyebrows shot up.

  “It just happened. Really. Don’t tell anyone.”

  She squinted at me and held out a white scrap of paper.

  I took it. “What’s this?”

  “My number. I want to help.”

  “Help?”

  “Yes. With whatever. You’re doing research or something, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, you should. You could change the world.”

  “Change the world? ”

  Shelley stomped her foot. “For a freaking genius, you are so dumb sometimes! God! Think beyond yourself, Sovern.”

  Think beyond myself ? I’d been doing nothing else for the last twenty-four hours. “I do things alone,” I said.

  I stepped past her and headed to my locker without looking back. Yet all through lunch, Shelley’s words and her expression
repeated in my brain. Especially You could change the world.

  My head was raw by the time I approached Calculus. But during class, Gage only glanced at me once. I started studying him, for a change, from my seat by the window as he stared ahead and took notes. Gage, taking notes? When class ended, he gathered his stuff and dashed.

  I ambled down the hall, watching my Converse and considering assumptions we make about other people. You could change the world. I switched out my books at my locker and headed to Handler’s office. You could change the world. He looked up from his desk. You could change the world.

  “Hello, Sovern.”

  I imagined him saying Hello, Sovern to me in other universes. Each Sovern different somehow. Of course, Handler’d be different too.

  He shut his door but for an inch. I studied the entry-less courtyard. You could change the world. He sat behind his desk, orange golf shirt a blur against my vision. “Is your father feeling better?” he said.

  “Uh-huh.” Yesterday, Dad + salt = he returned to work this morning. The rims of his eyes still looked chapped, though. “He knows about me researching quantum physics. I told him.” This is the life we’ve been given. Our test.

  Handler nodded.

  “So our agreement’s off. I don’t have to be here.” I’d planned to end the meeting after saying that, but the unexpected ways Shelley and Gage were acting now made me sit a moment longer. Mostly, I needed relief from Shelley’s voice repeating, You could change the world. I ran my fingers over my lips and imagined sealing them.

  “You left here pretty upset two days ago,” Handler said.“Do you want to talk about it?”

  Two days? Was that all it was? It seemed like a month.

  “Sovern, what I was trying to express was that you can still love your mother after her death.”

  The room heated up a hundred degrees, and my hand came to my stomach. I fluttered my fingers to ease the adrenaline craving surging through me. If I admitted Mom was really gone, it would change everything. Loving a … dead person was a different sort of love. I’d glimpsed it once, right before I started dating Gage, and it had scared me way more than my accident with the Shangri-La spruce or sailing off Pride. It had made my innards churn and made me crave acts like ditching, riding at speed’s dangerous edge, or nicotine kisses. Anything that would blot out the hollow void of loving a dead thing.